SUPER STRAIN OF E-COLI

While the media was busy reporting last week about why some people hear “Laurel” while others hear “Yanny,” a vital piece of news slipped right on by.

So, unless you happen to subscribe to the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, you likely didn’t hear that a super-strain of E. coli was just discovered on a commercial Chinese poultry farm.

This superbug is resistant to what’s called the antibiotic of “last resort,” a drug called colistin, meaning that it could be dire news for anyone who’s exposed. And while this threat appears to be thousands of miles away, it could come as close as your local supermarket.

Ever since the first shipment of poultry processed in China quietly arrived in the U.S. last year, we’ve been living under the threat that one of those Chinese superbugs will hitch a ride right along with it.

And as an eAlert reader, you know that we’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now about these Chinese chicken imports, which were first proposed during the Obama years. Now, however, that the plan has finally hatched, your only line of defense is knowing exactly where your chicken comes from.

Here’s what to look for before you touch another tender, wing, or roaster!

Going on a wing and a prayer

When a carton containing 110 pounds of poultry patties and nuggets from China arrived at a U.S. dock last June, whoever cut the seal on it opened up Pandora’s Box.

That was the very first shipment that resulted from a crazy trade deal allowing chickens that have been hatched, grown, and slaughtered in Chile, Canada, or the U.S. to be shipped to China… processed and cooked in China… then shipped back to the Americas.

If you think that sounds far-fetched, you’re not alone. But despite numerous protests over this deal, which was designed to make nice with China to open up that market for our beef exports, it’s now signed, sealed… and most definitely delivered!

While that first box of cooked chicken came from Chile, meaning that it traveled twice across the Pacific to reach our shores, that’s just the opening act — or as a former USDA official called it, a show of “good faith” from the U.S. as it gets everything cooked up for what’s going to be the main course.

Certainly, making ready-to-eat chicken products in a Chinese processing plant is bad enough, but what’s coming next will be even riskier. That’s allowing chicken that’s been raised and slaughtered right in China — the epicenter of poultry superbugs — to cross our borders and reach our tables.

In fact, the USDA outlined its plan to do exactly that, and it appeared as a proposed rule in a public notice last year. But again, unless you read the Federal Register, you wouldn’t have heard about that one!

And to give you an idea of how much Chinese chicken is expected to enter the U.S., the USDA estimates it to be over 300 million poundsa year for the next five years!

While the new discovery of that super-strain E. coli microbe is very scary news, it’s almost par for the course when it comes to Chinese poultry.

A study done last year and covered by the South China Morning Post found that almost 90 percent of the chicken meat sold in a particular province in China was contaminated with a superbug gene called MCR-1. That means that any bacteria carrying the gene is also resistant to the last-ditch antibiotic colistin.

Just remember, this is the same country where rat meat was sold as lamb and contaminated baby formula made hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies sick, killing six.

And of course, there was the pet food scandal of 2007, when Chinese suppliers replaced wheat gluten with a toxic chemical to save money. Thousands of dogs and cats in the U.S. died as a result.

While the big question is where this chicken may end up, no one really knows. The USDA has devised this whole plan to be as secretive as possible.

This means that you want to make sure any chicken you eat is raised AND processed right here in America. The first thing you’ll have to do is give up any pre-cooked chicken dishes — especially nuggets or patties. Chances are slim to none that any notice will be placed on the packaging to tell you whether it came from Shanghai or Sandusky, Ohio.

Next, be sure that any poultry you buy to cook at home comes from organic-certified U.S. farms.

While that may cost a little bit more, you’ll know that your chicken is “made” in the U.S. from start to finish, contains no pesticides or antibiotics, and didn’t arrive on a slow boat from China!